by LS Sygnet
I shot Devlin a knowing glance. “How long did you try?”
“Fifteen minutes of dead silence other than the sobbing was enough. I don’t know how you’re gonna get past her defenses, Helen. I sure couldn’t do it.”
We discussed her comment to the arresting state police officers.
“They’re sure she said her owner?”
“Yeah, Dev. But how the hell did you guys hear about it?”
“Briscoe,” I muttered. “We should probably expect him to pop out from behind a filing cabinet any minute now.”
Crevan stared at the floor. “Did he want to talk to me about the case?”
“Smug bastard,” I muttered.
Devlin intervened with the facts. “He heard you talking to Chris before you came out here. I assume he was on his way to the victim they found by the bay tonight. He’s treading on thin ice right now with a lot of people. Best to keep focused on the case.”
One of Johnny’s men stepped into the conference room adjacent to Johnny’s office. “Ms. Eriksson?”
“Yeah.”
“Phone call for you on line three. It’s Commander Orion.”
“Why is he calling me here instead of my cell?” I reached for the phone on the table and depressed the blinking button. “Johnny?”
“Helen, what the hell are you doing?”
I groaned. “He called you, didn’t he? That whining little troublemaker couldn’t call you fast enough.”
“Did you try to kill him?”
“No!”
“Helen, he says there were half a dozen witnesses, that you almost choked him to death.”
“Do you want to hear my side of this or not?”
“If it includes any type of justification for assaulting a police detective, one who happens to be a very old friend –”
“I’m not saying another word. If you want me arrested, I’ve got two of your men standing right here, Johnny. If you want to hear how your good pal accused me of not caring about a dead child because she wasn’t white with blonde hair and blue eyes, you know where to find me. Until then, I don’t think I want to see you or talk to you!” I slammed the receiver down into its cradle.
“You wanna arrest me Devlin? Or do you need to wait until he makes it an official order?”
“Uh… I’d like to talk about how we’re gonna approach this problem with getting Florence Payette to talk,” he said. “Any suggestions, Crevan?”
“I thought maybe a softer touch, female would be helpful,” Crevan eyed me warily, as if he wondered if I was capable of being calm and nurturing at the moment. “Then again, if we have someone talk to her that could possibly relate to what she’s been through –”
“Do we have any officers out here with a history of slavery in their ancestry?” I asked.
“Uh… maybe,” Crevan said. “One of our dispatchers. I think her great-grandmother was a slave in Georgia.”
“Get her up here,” I said. “She might be very useful getting Payette to open up about her history.”
My cell phone started ringing. I stared at the screen. Johnny. I touched the ignore button.
“Helen, don’t let this thing blow out of proportion with Johnny,” Crevan said.
“I thought I asked you to get this dispatcher up here,” I snapped impatiently. “Don’t forget we’re working on borrowed time. It’s almost ten o’clock now. This baby has been missing for nearly seven hours.”
“I’ll go get her,” Devlin offered. “We’re talking about Beatrice, right?”
“Yeah, Helen and I will wait here until you find her.” He waited until Devlin closed the door. “You know I’m right. Yes, it was petty for Tony to call him like that. It’s not like you don’t know that he’s one of the most immature people on the force in Darkwater Bay, Helen. You also know that Johnny has a soft spot for the old guy because he showed him the ropes a million years ago.”
“And the woman he claims to love just can’t compete with that.” My voicemail chimed. I silenced the phone.
“Helen, don’t doubt that he loves you. What the hell did you do to piss Tony off this time? Did you threaten to kill the kidnapper when we find him?”
“No,” I said. “But I did grab him by the throat and shut him up.”
“As in choked him?”
“Oh c’mon, Crevan. We’re talking about a hand hold. One hand. Thumb, fingers. Nothing major. If he weren’t such a tub of lard, he could’ve stepped backward and gotten loose.”
“Somehow I doubt that. I don’t think you know your strength sometimes.”
“There’s another point in his piss poor lie. I don’t even have my strength back in my left arm. Not completely. I’m practically weak as a kitten.”
“Lioness maybe. Let it go. Don’t let this muck up your relationship with Johnny. If you have to tell yourself that you’re not giving Tony the satisfaction, then do it. Johnny’s working an important case. The last thing he needs is the worry that you’re not speaking to him, or worse, throwing him out of your life again.”
“Did I say that?” My hand perched on one bony hip.
“It might be open to that interpretation. You told him you didn’t want to see or speak to him.”
Phone in my pocket vibrated. I pulled it out. Johnny again.
“He’s not gonna give up until you talk to him.”
With more than a little unreasonable defiance, I shut the phone off. “I’m too angry to speak to him now. If you feel the need to report that back to him, go for it. I’ve got a missing baby that needs to be found and the likeliest suspect in her abduction waiting for an effective interview. If you don’t mind, I think I need a moment to calm down before I see her. Last thing we need is for her to be scared to death of me too.”
As it turned out Beatrice Simpson couldn’t have been a better candidate for the interview. We spoke for several minutes before I decided that Crevan’s suggestion was a good one.
Her soft brown eyes did wonders with my agitation. Anger leeched out of my veins, replaced with a sense of calm. People had lived through horrors for hundreds of years without any true advocates from those charged with protecting the public. Florence Payette was every bit the victim that any other person held in captivity had been.
“We gotta go easy with her, Helen,” Beatrice said. “My granny used to tell stories about her mama. How she got beat on a regular basis, but that she was so loyal to her family she wouldn’t go when the war was over and she was set free. She didn’t know any other way. This lady is gonna feel the same way. Last thing she needs is a cop trying to scare her into giving information about somebody she sees that way. This guy that owned her, he’s not the bad guy in her mind. He’s looked after her for a long time.”
“Right,” I said. “Which is why I think you should do the talking, Beatrice. I need some specific information. First and foremost, I need to know if someone told Florence to take that baby this afternoon. I need to know who she gave her to. I need the identity of the person who… owns her.” The words made my stomach churn as much as the notion of slavery did.
“I’ll do my best, but it might take more than one conversation to get her to trust me. Promise me that you won’t say anything that’ll scare her.”
“Do my best,” I smiled and made an X over my heart. “She’s the best lead we’ve got. Time is not on our side, Beatrice.”
I followed her into the interrogation room. Florence was not what I expected. She was long and lean. Graying black hair was pulled into a tight bun at the nape of her neck. She chewed the fingernails on a withered hand that trembled before her lips.
“Ms. Florence?” Beatrice began carefully. She pulled out a seat and sat down. “My name is Beatrice, and this is my friend Helen. We wanted to come in here and see how you’re doing. Do you need anything? Some water maybe? A soda?”
“Am I in trouble?” Payette whispered.
“No, honey, not at all. We’d like your help with something though. There was some trouble at the hos
pital this afternoon. You left before Ms. Helen had the chance to talk to you.”
“You’re looking for that little baby,” her voice took on a very childlike quality, a sing-song voice. “I like the little babies.”
“They’re very wonderful, aren’t they Florence?” Bea said.
Florence nodded. “I like to take care of them while their mother’s rest. They say I take real good care of them at the hospital.”
“I believe that,” Bea said. “Did you always like taking care of the babies?”
“Oh yes. Even before my …”
“Your what, sweetheart?”
Florence bit down on her lower lip and averted her eyes. Not going to identify her owner easily.
“Do you like stories, Florence? I’d like to tell you a story.”
“Ok,” she whispered. “Is it about babies?”
“It’s about my great-grandmother,” Bea said. “I think her life was a lot like yours, Florence. From the time she was born, my nana wasn’t allowed to speak to anyone unless someone spoke to her. She never got to say what she thought or felt until she was almost thirty years old.”
Florence peeked up through thinning eyelashes. “Really?”
“Oh yes,” Bea said. “But to hear her tell the story, she had a very good life. Her job was something called a house darkie. Do you know what that means?”
“She was owned,” Florence whispered.
“Yes, my great-grandmother was a slave. When she was twenty-nine years old, the war that eventually gave her freedom ended. Only Nana was scared. It was very frightening for her to suddenly have to live her life differently from the only thing she’d ever known.”
“Like when I had to become a nurse,” Florence said. “I was so scared.”
I watched this meek woman roll into herself and wondered what sort of threat could’ve forced her to do something she had to understand on some level was wrong. Whatever it was, anything I could threaten her with paled in comparison to what the beast who created her fractured psyche would do if she disobeyed.
“Florence, you told the police that brought you here that someone owns you,” Bea said. “Is that the person that made you become a nurse?”
She withdrew further.
“My nana’s master made her be a house worker,” Bea continued. “Nana said they told her she couldn’t work in the fields because she was such a small woman. I always thought that she got the good job in the house because… well, because her master loved her too much to see her suffer in the fields with the other slaves.”
That got her attention. She peeked up again.
“Did your mother teach you about God, Florence?”
She nodded. “God loves all his children, even those who are owned.”
“God doesn’t believe that anyone should own another person. I believe that God sent me and Ms. Helen to save people from being owned. I prayed my whole life that I could live long enough to make my Nana proud of me. I thought – if I can just help one person who suffered like Nana did, she would know that the world is a different place than the one she knew her whole life.”
“I want to make my mama proud,” Florence said softly. “She says I must always do as Mr. Sherman says.”
Sherman! The diplomat? Of all the unconscionable abuses of power …
“You can tell me what Mr. Sherman wants you to do, Florence. It’s not a secret, is it? He wanted you to become a nurse. Right?”
She nodded. “I’m to be good, do as I’m told, never sass. Take care of the children.”
“Mr. Sherman’s children?”
“Oh yes, ma’am. He had such beautiful little girls. And Ms. Sherman promised me that I could take care of the new baby when she came home from the hospital too. Such a pretty baby! She has blonde hair, so soft and curly. Such pretty pink skin. Ms. Sherman promised that I could come home with her baby, but …”
“Did Ms. Sherman have a baby this week, Florence?”
Her hands clenched into fists on the table.
“Can I ask what she named her baby?”
“Macy,” Florence stole another peek. “She was gonna call her Macy.”
“That’s a very pretty name. My nana’s name was Gertrude, but everybody called her Trudy.”
“Macy is like that fancy store, where Ms. Sherman likes to go shopping. She told me she wouldn’t give her baby an ugly name like my mother gave me.”
I broke my silence. “Florence is a beautiful name. Do you know what it means?”
“No Ms. Helen, I surely don’t. I liked it more after I learned about Florence Nightingale. She was a nurse like me.”
“I’m sure your mother is very proud of you, Florence,” Bea said.
“I don’t know if she is or not, ma’am. I haven’t seen my mother in five years.”
“Is she in heaven?” I asked.
Shrug.
“Florence, did someone own your mother too?”
“Mr. Sherman,” she whispered. “He sent Mother away when she got old. She wasn’t any use anymore.”
“Use?”
Florence nodded. “Too old to make babies, too tired to take care of the others.”
My stomach clenched again. Sherman, by all accounts, died a very old man.
“Maybe he sent her to a place where someone would take care of her, Florence. Do you remember how old your mother was when Mr. Sherman sent her away?” Bea asked.
“Sixty-four.” She squirmed in her chair. “I don’t think Mother or Mr. Sherman wants me to talk about this. He says people don’t understand how the world is supposed to be, and I don’t want to get into trouble. He’s nice to me, but Ms. Sherman …”
I clenched my fists under the table. Five years ago put Florence at 52 – her mother was a fraction older, only twelve years at the time she gave birth to her daughter. My mouth opened, reckless words forming from a gut reaction of rage.
“That makes me very sad, Florence. My mother died when I was young. She would be 67 years old if she were still alive. I would never send her away. But then, I don’t have someone like Mr. Sherman telling me what to do. Ms. Sherman can’t tell us what to do either. Would you like it if I made sure Ms. Sherman never tells you what to do again?”
Her chocolate eyes widened. “Oh, you mustn’t do that, Ms. Helen. I wouldn’t have anybody to take care of me!”
“But you’re a nurse, Florence. You’ve been taking care of yourself just fine for a very long time.”
“I only went to the hospital and took care of the babies.”
“Are you saying that you want to stay with Mr. Sherman?” Bile bubbled in the back of my throat at the thought.
“If Ms. Sherman goes away, Mr. Sherman might need me again. I have to be here if he needs me.”
“When was the last time you saw Mr. Sherman?” Bea asked.
Florence shrugged. “New Year’s?”
“Did he tell you that you could come home and take care of Ms. Sherman’s baby then?”
“Maybe, if I was good and helped Ms. Sherman get her baby out of the hospital.”
Now we were getting somewhere. I struggled to sit still and let Beatrice coax the information out of our reluctant accomplice.
“How did you help her do that?” Beatrice asked. “Is that what happened earlier today at the hospital?”
“It was a secret,” Florence whispered. “Somebody took Ms. Sherman’s baby from the hospital in Montgomery. Her friend told me that it was a bad man here, that he stole Ms. Sherman’s baby and gave it to his wife. I had to help rescue Macy and send her home.”
It was enough for me. I doubted that Florence knew the name of the man she gave the baby to, but waited a few minutes for Beatrice to see if Florence would admit that as well.
“Who helped you rescue Ms. Sherman’s baby, Florence? He must’ve been very brave to help you like that.”
She nodded. “He’s one of Mr. Sherman’s friends. He has lots of important friends. Did you know that even the governor used to be his friend?”
“Used to?” I asked. “Did something happen to make Mr. Sherman not like him anymore?”
“I don’t know. Mr. Sherman just said he was done helping him if …” her forehead wrinkled. “If the governor didn’t want to help him back, they were done being friends. Mr. Sherman doesn’t like it when people don’t follow his rules. If he gets angry with me, he’ll send me away. So I can’t be bad. I don’t want to be farther away from him than I already am.”
I couldn’t shut my mouth. Time to rescue the terrorized woman with the emotional maturity of a child. “Florence, Mr. Sherman can’t hurt you anymore. He died.”
She slapped one hand over her mouth to stifle the sob – and wouldn’t say another word.
Chapter 9
“I blew it,” I fumed.
“Calm down. We got more information that I ever dreamed possible. Fantastic job in there, Bea,” Crevan said.
“I still can’t believe we’re talking about the same Sherman,” Devlin said. “How can it be someone else? Sherman was a supporter of Collangelo.”
“Apparently not anymore,” I said. “I see more than a few problems with Florence’s statement. She’ll hardly make a credible witness if we could get her to testify. We’ve got to get independent evidence against the Shermans that links them to this crime.”
“What do you suggest?” Devlin asked.
“You’re the one with ties in Montgomery. Who do you trust out there? We need someone watching that house.”
“Helen, why don’t we call Johnny. I know he’d make time for this case.”
“Crevan, he’s got official business with the governor who apparently had more than a foot in bed with someone I suspect has been engaged in human trafficking for a very long time. What do we even know about this guy’s service in diplomacy?”
“Basically what I told you at the hospital,” Devlin said. “Isn’t worrying about his background and pretty much all the rest moot as long as we’ve got a missing baby out there?”
“I know exactly where we’ll find her,” I said. “Florence flat out said it. She gave the Datello child to an unknown friend of Mr. Sherman because it was really Ms. Sherman’s child.”